Psalms 39:7,8

And now, Lord, what wait I for?

my hope is in Thee. Deliver me from all my transgressions: make me not the reproach of the foolish.

The appeal and prayer of a waiting soul

I. His waiting.

1. What he did not wait for--not for any earthly good.

2. What he did wait for--manifestation of love of God. Removal of affliction. The subdual of his sins. A smile from God. God’s will to be done in him.

II. His hope--God.

III. His prayer--“Deliver me from all,” etc.

1. From the guilt;

2. The filth;

3. The love;

4. The power;

5. The commission-of sin.

IV. The reproach which he feared--that of “the foolish.” He knew he was liable to it, and he feared it much. (J. C. Philpot.)

Faith and culture

The latter of these two verses is the language of a man who had seen much of life. And yet we must own that the life of man is a fuller, a more intense, a more many-sided thing to-day than ever before. How many interests it touches; amid what wide-reaching complications it lives and moves; under what enormous pressure it rushes on. The age which we call our own is mainly an inventing and contriving one. In a word, for that is the question to which our text directly lead us, Is the world really happier because of what civilization has done for it, or no? No one will say that civilization has done nothing for the race, and that there has been no progress apart from that of the Cross. To affirm that would be to affirm what is untrue. For civilization may be without Christian faith. Enlightened selfishness has long found out that the individual is better off and happier when the community is honest, healthy and mutually self-respecting. Hence, it is not certain that society, as you and I know it, would lapse into barbarism without the knowledge of the faith of the Crucified. But the question is, also, Would human happiness remain? or rather, Is it to civilization that the world owes its happiness, and are we of to-day, with our higher and finer civilization, happier than our forefathers? They were without a multitude of advantages that we have, and the range and the pace of their life were almost infinitely narrower and slower. But in widening the range and in quickening the pace, have we deepened the current and enriched the quality of our lives? “Thou hast multiplied the nation,” says the prophet, “and not increased the joy.” And yet there is a Book which tells you of a life which he who lives it is “not afraid of any evil tidings, for his heart standeth fast and believeth in the Lord.” There is a faith which has learned how to ask and to answer the deepest of all questions in the word, “And now, Lord, what is my hope? Truly my hope is even in Thee.” There is a life--you know at least one or two who here and there are living it--in which the world is neither a charnel-house, nor its pleasures dust and ashes. It is for this widening of the horizon of its life, that human society wants that message of faith which civilization does not and cannot bring it. Man is going to school here, and the things that he touches, and sees, and requires here, all these are simply toys with which he is building block-houses in the nursery, until he is fit for the life and employments of the future. It is to recall you to this higher range of thought and aspiration that this holy house exists. What do we come to church for if we do not need to be reminded, by what we see and hear and do here, of a world and life outside the boundaries of the widest civilization and unrevealed by the investigations of the most painstaking culture? We have hopes that are not met by any visible attainment. We have fears that are not silenced by any earthly voice. And there are some times when we have another and a more bitter consciousness--the consciousness of personal sin. We want to be forgiven. We want to be renewed. We want to be emancipated. In one word, we want that element in our lives which never enters it until the Cross has entered it, and has at once conquered us by its love and transformed us by its infinite and Divine compassion. We want all this, I say. Has it ever occurred to us to think of those other lives who want it no less, and who vet may so easily be left without it? (H. G. Potter.)

The believer hoping in God

I. His appeal. It implies--

1. An experimental persuasion of insufficiency. This is engraven in characters too deep to be erased by the hand of time, and too legible to be obliterated by passing vanities.

2. A strong sense of danger. He feels that the claims of the Almighty are as imperative as they are reasonable; and he is convinced that while the affections are enslaved by earthly objects, the soul is in danger of perishing everlastingly.

3. The shallowness of those hopes which have respect to creature merit as the procuring cause of salvation.

II. His affirmation.

1. His hope of pardon, acceptance, and eternal salvation centred in God.

2. His hope of support, consolation and happiness was reposed in God. From the world we can often derive neither help nor sympathy; in God we have both: He relieves and He compassionates. (W. Knight, M. A.)

Waiting and hoping

I. Here is a question. A man doesn’t go head foremost toward God, he goes heart foremost. The great trouble with sinners is that they put the head before the heart. “What wait I for?”

1. There is one man who says, “I am waiting for the Lord’s good time, the Lord’s own time.” Well, then, that good time has come at last. These revival services are to get men willing to be saved, and not to get God willing to save them. It is God’s accepted time. Every moment that you are a sinner that is the moment God is ready to save you. Thus much I tell you, You will never see the gates wider open than they are now.

2. Another says, “I am not waiting for God’s time, I am waiting for better terms.” Let me tell you about that terms business. There are plenty of people that want to go to heaven on their own schedule. They want to drink a little, lie a little, and gamble occasionally. Why will a man ask any better terms than that he quit those things that damage him on earth and prevent him going to heaven?

3. “I am not waiting for any better terms,” says the sinner; “I know that right is right and wrong is wrong. I am waiting for the Church to get right.” Waiting for the Church to get right! Let the Church be, and do as it will, I am going to serve the Lord. Don’t stay out because of the hypocrites, but come in and help crowd them out.

4. “I am waiting for feeling,” says some fellow. You look at me. What do you mean by feeling? Do you mean serious thought? If you don’t mean that, you don’t mean anything. If serious thought is not feeling, there is no serious thought in repentance. When a man sees he ought to do right and quit the wrong, that is the only feeling there is on the subject. Do you think that you ought to be a Christian, and ought to start to-night? If you do, you have got feeling enough to sweep you right under the Cross, if you will start now.

5. Another fellow says, “I am not waiting for feeling; I am waiting ‘until I am fit.” Here is a fellow starving to death; there is a richly-loaded table. “Are you hungry?. .. Yes, I am just as hungry as I can be; but I can’t go, my hands ain’t fit.” “Here are soap and water and towels.” He says, “I ain’t fit to wash.” Don’t hang back because “I am not fit.” Come up here and get fit. Did Jesus Christ come into the world to save good people? Oh no; but to save sinners.

6. “I know Christ died to save me, but I am waiting to try myself awhile.” Many resolve to be good men, and they try. The devil laughs to see them.

7. “I am waiting for faith.” Yes; you have been waiting forty years for faith. How much have you saved up? Like the fellow who had ten bushels of wheat, and was waiting till more grew before he would sow what he had[Sow it, and you will have a hundred-fold. “I want to be a blacksmith as soon as I get muscle.” Why don’t you go at it? There he stands, until at last he has not muscle enough to lift the hammer. He is getting it with a vengeance. How did you get faith? by using what you had. But now let us look at the other side. We have been looking at man, let us--

II. Turn now to God. “my hope is in God.” Now you have struck the keynote for eternal life. My hope is not in riches, pastor, friends, father and mother, children, Church; but my hope is in God. Will you start to-night? You may say, “I am mighty weak.” I know it; but your hope is in God. “Yes; but I am a poor sinner.” My hope is in God; it is not in myself. I know I am a sinner. Yes; but you are very, very weak; you are as frail as a bruised reed. Yes; but my hope is in God. If I commit myself to God, I will never go down: I will stay up as long as God stays up. I put my hand in the hand of God, and commit it all to Him to-night. Won’t you do it? Let me take your hand, and help you to start to heaven. (S. P. Jones.)

The vanity of earthly things leading to hope in God

The text is a conclusion drawn from the preceding verse which tells of the “vain show” in which “every man” walks. Each expression goes to demonstrate this vanity. But we are not to be discontented with earth or to despise those temporal blessings which Providence places within our reach. Far be the thought. It is the resting on such things, and not the use of them, against which men need to be warned. And even Christians need this warning, Hence it is needful that we should deeply feel the vanity of all earthly things in order that we may the more earnestly adopt the language of the text. Never shall we fly to the Creator, as the source of all true happiness, till we utterly despair of finding it in the creature. And now let me rejoice with you who have found your hope in the Lord. We have become so through Jesus Christ, who gave Himself as the ransom for a ruined world, and redeemed us to God by His blood. Happy are the people in such a case, and who can say with David, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and,” etc. (J. Slade, M. A.)